Billionaire Elon Musk lashed out at an English diver who helped rescue the Thai football team, calling him a "pedo", before eventually retracting his comments.
Musk was responding to an interview with diver Vern Unsworth, who lives in Thailand, in which Unsworth criticised Musk's plan to use a mini submarine to rescue the boys.
"It just had absolutely no chance of working," Unsworth told CNN.
"He [Musk] had no conception of what the cave passage was like ... the submarine, I believe, was about 5'6" long, rigid, so it wouldn't have gone round corners or round any obstacles."
Unsworth said when Musk arrived at the rescue site with the submarine in tow, he "was asked to leave very quickly", and also told CNN that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts".
Musk responded early this morning, New Zealand time, referring to Unsworth as "pedo guy" and saying he would make a video proving that the submarine was a viable rescue method.
"We will make [a video] of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it," Musk tweeted.
He also tweeted that he "never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves".
Musk was criticised by many, some of whom accused Musk of using his sizeable (22 million) Twitter following to incite ill will towards people, and others saying his comments were clearly libelous.
Musk deleted his tweets a few hours later.
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